My newsletter subscribers are in for a treat this week. As a special holiday gift, I'm sending them an exclusive short story "Up on the Housetop." If you'd like to get in on the fun, click and sign up for The Latest from Dax. Here's an excerpt from the story:

Up on the Housetop

Excerpt

Meow.

“Shut it, Ziggy, you dumb cat.” I rolled over in bed and tugged the pillow over my head.

Meow.

“Grrr…” I sprang up, half groggy, half annoyed. Then I snapped to reality. Ziggy was outside. His next meow came from above.

Like me, my cat enjoys climbing up on the roof of our house. I do some of my best thinking up there. Unlike me, Ziggy can’t seem to find his way down. I rescued him twice last week.

I glanced at the bedside clock. Ugh. Of course Ziggy would pick 2:00 a.m. Christmas morning to disrupt my visions of sugarplums. And worse, in about four hours my bratty little brother Sean would storm in here and drag me downstairs because, heaven forbid I don’t witness his Santafest.

Meow.

“All right, all right. Hang onto your whiskers, I’m coming.”

I slipped on some wool socks, raised the window, and with the coolness of Cat Woman, I hitched onto the ivy trellis and scaled up. Brrr… You could store leftovers out here. My flannel jammy bottoms and long sleeve tee barely cut the chill. Oh well. I could endure it all of the two minutes it’d take for a kitty rescue.

I carefully avoided the string of Christmas lights as I heaved myself up and over and… What the holly? Parked smackdab in the center of our roof was an enormous sleigh and eight for-real reindeer! The shock caused me to stumble back, nearly tumbling off the roof and going splat on our family of plastic snowmen.

Was this some kind of joke? Had Dad hired Reindeer R Us to pull off some big thing for Sean?

I ventured a few steps closer. That’s when I heard, “Achoo!”

I froze. Overwhelmingly and literally. I swear, it had to be thirty degrees out.

“Achoo!”

Please tell me Dad hadn’t hired some poor schmuck to play Santa. Was some out-of-work actor waiting to Kris Kringle his way down our chimney?​I tiptoed to the side of the sleigh, careful not to spook the reindeer and get trampled like the famous grandma in the song. There, sitting on the sleigh’s edge, legs dangling, was a guy in a green sweatshirt and jeans. He kept his head down, his attention on whatever game he had going on his phone. He quickly buried his nose in the crook of his arm and, “Achoo!”

Two YA authors I admire, E. Lockhart and Joy Preble are featured in Entertainment Weekly, as E. interviews Joy on her upcoming book. And check out the great cover!

In advance of Joy Preble’s forthcoming book It Wasn’t Always Like This, a novel with shades of Tuck Everlasting, the author has done a Q&A with fellow author E. Lockhart, who wrote We Were Liars. EW is proud to present the Q&A below, along with the exclusive cover reveal for It Wasn’t Always Like This — and an excerpt of the book for all you hungry fans. It Wasn’t Always Like This hits shelves May 17, 2016.​Check out the cover, interview, and excerpt below:

Controversial magician Derren Brown gave commuters a rush-hour shock with these two chilling Victorian sisters.

The 10-year-old girls, dressed in period costume and wearing creepy doll masks, materialized at various spots around London this morning.

Many confused and unnerved members of the public took to social media after seeing the terrifying two-some carrying toy dolls and pushing an empty 1900's style pram.

The sightings, at Charing Cross Tube Station, Oxford Street, Regent's Street and Hamleys, were later revealed to be an elaborate stunt by Thorpe Park Resort to promote the world's first psychological theme park attraction created by Derren Brown arriving in spring 2016.